Wednesday, January 29, 2014

You Win Some, You Lose Some

It's citrus season, so I like to keep my eyes open for new canning recipes to try. I spied this yummy sounding recipe for Salted Cranberry Grapefruit Jam from Local Kitchen last year and I immediately made a mental note to give it a try. So, over the holidays I grabbed a few extra bags of fresh cranberries, threw them in the freezer, and waited.

Last weekend, I picked up a large, red grapefruit and started on this recipe Monday night. Initially, it tasted wonderful! It was salty, sweet, and sour all in the right places and I had hopes this would be my next new favorite preserve. But after letting it macerate for 24 hours and boiling it down to the jelling stage, the grapefruit peel took over and slapped me upside the head. It was really, really bitter. Bummer.

Grapefruit peel has a tendency to do this, and you have to be a hardcore marmalade lover to get over the bitterness. Some English marmalades are made specifically to be really bitter, but I don't like them one bit, and I won't give a jam or jelly away to someone if I don't love it myself.

Shame; it jelled up perfectly too. Well, back to the drawing board. I'm going to try this recipe again with only the grapefruit pulp and no peel.